Named a Best Book of 2023 by Financial Times and Kirkus ReviewsThe #1 Sunday Times bestseller, published in the UK as Politics on the Edge. "One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality." --Matthew Parris, The TLS "[Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served in British Parliament, and ran against Boris Johnson. Now he gives us his view of what's wrong with politics, and how we can make it right." --Adam Grant, "The 12 New Fall Books to Enrich Your Thinking" From a great writer--legendary for his expeditions into some of the world's most forbidding places--a wise, honest, and sometimes absurdist memoir of a most remarkable journey through British politics at the breaking point Rory Stewart was an unlikely politician. He was best known for his two-year walk across Asia--in which he crossed Afghanistan, essentially solo, in the months after 9/11--and for his service, as a diplomat in Iraq, and Afghanistan. But in 2009, he abandoned his chair at Harvard University to stand for a seat in Parliament, representing the communities and farms of the Lake District and the Scottish border--one of the most isolated and beautiful districts in England. He ran as a Conservative, though he had no prior connection to the politics and there was much about the party that he disagreed with. How Not to Be a Politician is a candid and penetrating examination of life on the ground as a politician in an age of shallow populism, when every hard problem has a solution that's simple, appealing, and wrong. While undauntedly optimistic about what a public servant can accomplish in the lives of his constituents, the book is also a pitiless insider's expos
